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Quote of the Day: Pythagoras on Beans
“Abstain from beans.” — Pythagoras of Samos
Pythagoras has a reputation as having been a somewhat odd dude. Perhaps a charlatan, perhaps a thaumaturge. One thing that many sources say is that he urged his followers to abstain from beans. About a thousand years ago when I was in school, it was explained to me that he did this because the Ancients believed that beans gathered spirits of the dead, and this is why they created gas, because the spirit was the breath.
A much more interesting explanation I ran across much later was that voting was done with beans, so by saying “Abstain from beans,” what Pythagoras meant was, “Stay away from politics.” Well, who could argue with that?
Published in History
Well, the ones who’ve looked very seriously and carefully would presumably be the sort described at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/.
I.e., for the most part at least, people I haven’t really studied.
But I’m a mathematical realist. I think we can determine that something is real by observing that nothing makes much sense without it–common-sense epistemology following Thomas Reid.
“Nothing unreal exists.”
If you punch these various foods into a nutritional calculator, it becomes clear that the “food combining” idea is not necessary. One could eat Quinoa and broccoli (as an example) and get more than enough of each of the essential amino acids.
Nutritional calculators like Fit Day or the Cronometer are good ones.
In other words, you don’t need to stress about essential amino acids because if you did decide to look it up, you’d notice that pretty much every food available in the United States has all of the essential amino acids.
Just don’t try to live off a single food all by itself. Don’t go on an all grape diet or an all apple diet.
I imagine most people, vegetarian or not, are not tempted to eat only a single food. And our bodies can store these essential amino acids, so that adequate amounts of each are available to the body when they are needed.
The American obsession with protein is actually bad for our health because it persuades Americans to eat fewer fruits and vegetables than they would eat if they didn’t stress about protein so much.
Americans get much more protein in their diets than their body really needs. And when vegetarians are studied, even they get more protein than they need.
Fiber, on the other hand, is something that well over 90 percent of Americans do not get enough of in their diets. My father had to get part of his colon removed when he was in his 50s because it got infected. A diet with adequate fiber would have prevented this.
Tell me about it. Having celiac disease and allergies to several grains, fiber is my biggest dietary concern. Figs, dates, and prunes are a major part of my diet, as are vegetables.
You all are missing the point. I learned a different “beans and Pythagorus” story in medical school. This was the theory that Pythagorus had G6-PD deficiency, a genetic defect that can cause hemolysis if one ingests fava beans. My professor, Achilles Pappano (I am NOT making this up!) claimed that Pythagorus was chased into the field of fava beans and that their pollen led to an episode of hemolysis which proved fatal.
One recognizes the difficulty of proving such a theory. Indeed, one commentator seems to have debunked it.
https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2016/12/pythagoras-and-beans-2-why-ban-beans.html
It would not be hard, however, for a philosopher to recognize that some people in his society were sickened by these beans and so to eschew and ban their use.
Why does a tradition pot of Boston Baked Beans have exactly 239 beans?
Because otherwise it would be two-forty.
Tribe Theory is based in Singapore. The math doesn’t sound particularly exciting, though.